I’m in the process of writing my first thriller novel, which I’m totally excited about. To do so, I want to prepare myself the best way possible. How do I do that? By reading thriller novels, of course! My sister recommended one, and upon reading the book’s blurb, I was hooked, and wanted to get my hands on a copy pronto. Thank goodness for libraries! (I say that because a book by a best-selling author costs more than I’m willing to spend right now.)

Let me first share with you a little bit about the book, including the cover and blurb, and then I’ll go into what my thoughts are.

Velocity

By Dean Koontz

If you don’t take this note to the police . . . I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. . . . If you do . . . I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have six hours to decide. The choice is yours.
 
The typewritten note under his windshield seems like just a sick joke. But in less than twenty-four hours, Billy Wiles, an ordinary, hardworking guy, is about to see his life take on the speed of a nightmare. Because a young blond schoolteacher is murdered—and now Billy has another note. And another deadline. This time he knows it’s no joke. He’s racing a killer faster than evil itself. And Billy must accept his terrifying challenge: The choice is yours.
 
Think fast. Fear never slows down. . . .

 

Sound goods, right? It did to me! And after reading it, I thought that it was amazing. That’s why I rated it four stars! Let me elaborate.

Dean Koontz did a wonderful job describing the story. There was never a dull moment. I thought it all came together rather nicely. Throughout, I was left wondering who could be the culprit. I also think that the whole premise is crazy! With these hard choices, there’s no way I could make a decision. What a creative thinker Mr. Koontz is. I applaud him for that.

If I liked it so much, why just four stars? Why not a perfect five? There are three reasons why I took this book off from the perfect throne:

  1. Some descriptions were too many, in my opinion. I thought there was information we just didn’t need.
  2. I felt the ending was too easy. Once we figure out things and the victim works his way to victory, it all just goes too quickly. There was barely a fight.
  3. I also didn’t like how the character was too “at ease” with everything. There is no way a person, going through what this character did, would handle it the way he did.

But overall, I liked the book. I’m glad my sister recommended it. I would recommend it as well. To warn you, though, it isn’t clean. But that shouldn’t really come as a surprise, seeing as it’s Dean Koontz and all.

Here is the link to the book’s Amazon page for you to check it out some more:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345533461

 

A few weeks ago, there tended to be a theme at my house. This isn’t something we planned for, and really I never noticed it until recently as I thought back on it. The theme was:

 

SALSA

 

Why was this the theme for the week? Let me explain.

First of all, on a Wednesday night, the local library hosted free salsa dancing lessons. For someone who has been wanting to do dance lessons for a long time, this was the time to jump on the opportunity. Not only did I get my dance lessons, but they were free, and the type of dance was fun! The best part of it all was that my husband, who wants nothing to do with dancing, was more than willing to appease me. He joined in on the fun, and I would say he was glad to have had the opportunity to learn something new and do something different. For the record, I would do salsa dancing again. I would also try any other dance lessons.

Second of all, we had a lot of tomatoes from our garden that needed to be used up. We have never made homemade salsa before so we had to learn fast. We searched for a recipe that looked good and even doctored it up a bit. After trying it, there are things I would change. It turned out way too watery. Probably because we chopped those tomatoes up to smithereens. Regardless, there are things I’d omit or change all together.

These two things don’t seem worthy of calling “salsa” a theme. But here’s why I would say it was. These were two things we do not typically do. They were new. They were different. They both happened within like two day’s time. It stood out. When something stands out, I can easily see it become a theme. Plus, when the root word of both things is the same, it’s obviously a theme, lol!

Have you had themes you’ve noticed show up in your days, weeks, months, or maybe even years? Were they intentional or by total coincidence?

By the way, do you have any good salsa recipes I should try?

My boys love Star Wars. Wait, is there a stronger word for love? If there is, that’s what they feel about Star Wars! It’s almost an obsession, especially for my six-year-old. It’s what he likes to wear, watch, collect, play, et cetera. He almost lives and breathes it. And his younger brother may not feel as strongly about it as he does, but that younger brother of his does like it because he likes it.

Anyway…the local library was doing a special event called “Jedi Academy”. I just had to bring my boys!

 

We had no idea what to expect, but are glad we went. Upon arriving, we had to get a checklist of tasks each boy had to complete. When completed, a signature would go in the respective spot on the checklist, confirming they did, in fact, pass that part of their training.

There were three training areas. One was an obstacle course where they had to practice shooting, tossing, throwing, jumping, and kicking.

Another area was training the ability to use ‘the force’. Using teamwork, each young Jedi had to raise and lower a ball without the ball falling off its platform.

The last training area was creating a light saber. Here is what each of my boys came up with (and, yes, we helped):

 

 

When all things on the checklist were crossed off, they had to return it to the front desk at the library where they received this:

 

 

That wasn’t it, though! They had one last mission to go on now that they were Jedi Knights. They were given 10 stickers. Their job was to find 10 bad guys throughout the library that were evil, and then shoot them with the stickers. Some of the evil characters they had to find were Kylo Ren, Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett, and my personal favorite, Darth Vader. Take a look at these stickers:

 

 

As you can see, many kids enjoyed taking a shot at Darth Vader! All in all, a great event. I appreciate the library doing things like this, getting kids involved in healthy activities, and hopefully, getting excited about the library itself. I know my boys walked out of there with some books to read! And, yes, I need to get them there more often!

And though this was fun, one day I hope to take my kids to the Star Wars-themed land down in Disney World that is set to open in 2019 or so. That would be super enjoyable for us all!